Stonebranch Online 2021: Week 5 Highlights
Discover UAC integrations and new features in the fourth week of Stonebranch Online 2021, and see what’s coming up in the event’s fifth and final week.
Week five of Stonebranch Online 2021 has come to a close and with it, the end of this year’s educational series. Topics ranged from hybrid IT to multi-cloud environments, DataOps to DevOps, and expert sessions to customer success stories. Read on to see what we covered this week and access links to all of this year’s sessions on-demand.
DevOps Strategies: Jobs-as-Code or GUI-Based Lifecycle Management?
DevOps is not a one-size-fits-all methodology. In this session, Tim Holmberg, Enterprise Automation Specialist at Donegal Insurance, joined Colin Cocksedge, Director of Product Management at Stonebranch, to discuss two separate options end-users have to apply DevOps methodologies within the Stonebranch Universal Automation Center (UAC).
Colin started the session by demonstrating how to roll out application updates with a jobs-as-code approach, using JSON automation definitions. He showed how the UAC supports jobs-as-code: API definitions in JSON format, script integrations with local repositories, and universal templates that connect to GitHub or use webhooks to automate based on commits.
Tim followed up by showing how Donegal Insurance uses the UAC’s built-in bundle-and-promote feature to let their development teams automate the DevOps lifecycle promotion process across dev/test/prod.
Donegal Insurance has been using UAC for about eight to 10 years, first only as a scheduling system to replace CA-7 on their z/OS mainframe system. When the application development team learned about the full capabilities of the UAC platform, they overwhelmed the two- to three-person automation team with requests.
Supported by Donegal’s automation team and the Stonebranch UAC, the application developers began using four unique environments to manage their own dev/test/prod processes: development, test, QA pre-prod, and production. The developers can build and automate their own workflows within their own development environments as they see fit, even if it doesn’t match the automation team’s recommendations. The developers can work in the way that’s best for them.
Round Table: Meet the Stonebranch Developers
Colin Cocksedge, Director of Product Management at Stonebranch, led this for-developers-by-developers session, assembling Stonebranch’s own UAC development team to answer questions and share UAC tips.
They also polled attendees to get a pulse check on needs and preferences to guide future enhancements with UAC. This interactive, collaborative session was the perfect close to the five-week educational series encapsulated within Stonebranch Online 2021.
A Big Thank You
On behalf of all of Stonebranch, we’d like to thank all presenters and attendees for being part of Stonebranch Online 2021. We couldn’t have done it without your participation and support. Thank you!
What’s Next
Want to catch up on all the sessions in Stonebranch Online 2021? They’re available on-demand! You'll find links to the following sessions on the event overview page:
- Eckerson Group: Using DataOps Methodologies to Orchestrate Your Data Pipelines
- How to Use UAC to Orchestrate Your Big Data Pipelines
- Master Your Hybrid IT Environment in a Multi-Cloud World: Dell Technologies Industry Expert Session
- A CTIO’s POV: Automating Operations at Makedonski Telekom
- BP’s Cloud-First Approach with SaaS-Based Workload Automation
- How to Connect UAC with any Hybrid IT Application, Platform, or System
- What’s New in UAC Version 7.1
- DevOps Strategies: Jobs-as-Code or GUI-Based Lifecycle Management (with Donegal Insurance)
You can also contact us to request access to:
- Opening Keynote: From Automation to Orchestration
- Round Table: Meet the Stonebranch Developers
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